Open letter to Stephen Carter - One Fibre Nation

Dear Stephen Carter,

I hope you are well and your Digital Britain report is progressing nicely. Perhaps you might like to consider the points raised here when writing it and advising government?

Knowing, as we all do, that the EndGame is Fibre To Every Home, the new Universal Service Obligation (USO) is inadequate.

It simply doesn't up the broadband bar sufficiently (considering it may last as long as the previous - 28 years), nor does the inclusion of mobile broadband begin to solve the problems in rural areas; perversely, it is more likely to perpetuate the digital division and entrench a new digital class system.

The issue then is social cohesion and there is a very simple solution:

Acknowledge that there is market failure today and mandate that ALL rural areas be given primary focus with Gordon Brown's proposed infrastructure funding (let's just assume he is going to do that), and so your report needs to emphasise rural areas first with FIBRE from START to FINISH, from home to world - I have been saying this since my speech at BSG1 conference in Oct 2001.

The money should not go to the telcos directly - see the arguments on this elsewhere.

Certainly telcos, existing and emerging alike, should be able to bid to design, build, and operate eNdGAme Fibre. That is not an issue.

The point is who owns the resultant infrastructure assets.

If this is to be public (our/my) money being spent, then there will be an IOU to be paid for by future taxation, hence it is with the best interests of future generations in mind that we as a society must act now.

Wireless/mobile should ONLY be used as a core broadband solution (rather than as an add-on to create the wireless cloud for mobility, access from any device, anywhere etc) if there is no way it can EVER be financially viable to reach a specific hamlet/remote village even if the civils were done by the locals eg capex of fibre, etc.

And even then, the economics to prove non-viability MUST include the benefits to the local economy were that hamlet/village/market town to be fibred up and potentially every resident able to create a business, benefit from reduced cost telemedicine, or increased access to education, and thereby contribute into the national economy.

*The social capital must be weighed up with the capex and opex when assessing the financial viability of fibre. *

If remote and rural citizens cost LESS to the economy of UK Plc, once fibred
up, for the basics - health and education - than they do currently, that is
part of the economic equation which proves fibre viability. (Analysys Mason
was doing some work on this previously 2005/6 ish, I don't know if it was ever published.)

Whilst costing less, they can potentially become worth more through wealth creation once they have fibre in their daily diet. The assumption that the economics of fibre are all about the telcos' profits is deeply flawed, and there is plenty of data showing what happens when you use fibre to regenerate rural areas from right across the world now.

Deploying fibre in rural areas first is a no-brainer. I and others have now been proven right that demand in rural areas is highest, with Ofcom's own statistics showing this for starters. As I have always said, the low hanging fruit is not in cities at all - that is a total fallacy.

What we should be looking at is:

Mutual Community Interest Asset Ownership – CIAO

Let us as a Fibre Nation say CIAO to outdated exploitative business models and JFDI the right way.

Yours etc

Also posted on 5tth.blogspot.com

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Your response to "Open letter to Stephen Carter - One Fibre Nation":

1. At 20 Jan 2009 12:25, mike kiely wrote:

Compared to the billions spent keeping our bankers afloat the investment in fibre would look virtous and good business at any level.

But the call for windfall investment should not include rubbishing the call for a Universal Broadband Service (UBS). They can happily run in parallel, as the specifics needed to define a UBS would be needed whatever medium is used radio, copper, fibre or a mix.

Fibre of itself does not specify the minimum speeds and minimum quality needed to support critical services such as telecare or true homeworking. To meet UBS no matter what the medium, ISPs would need to move from best effort Broadband - i.e.little transparency of service parameters to services where the properties are assured.

I hope a fibre windfall occurs, but it should not be argued as a panacea, or at the expense of improving existing broadband services. We will need both. More speed helps but does not equate directly with a better end user experience. The latter is measured in the end to end throughput and numbers of packets delivered within a pre-scribed budget for a specific application. Fibre access only arguements are not helped if you fail to articulate how the end to end service will be managed.

Assuming everyone is on line in the fibre world what is the peak hour capacity per user on the backhaul and internet exchange? To get the most from my fibre I am assuming the plan is to increase the end to end peak hour capacity per user by a factor of at least 50 times over a current level of circa 20Kbps! The Caio report as good as it is did not address this bit of detail or who might pay for it.
2. At 20 Jan 2009 15:58, Guy Jarvis wrote:

Re Mike:

Aye, yesterday's RBS annual loss is plenty to deliver Fibre to Every Home - hey the same amount of "hand-out" again, this time productively dedicated to transforming telecoms in this country might actually provide us and future generations with the means to pay back that enormous taxation IOU!

Agreed that the fibre itself makes no Quality of Service or performance claims

- it is that unlit passive infrastructure when allied with intelligent active equipment that together creates the endgame next-gen platform, across which any retail provider of content, applications or services can equally compete for custom.

End to end fibre simply creates or enables the fullest range of future-proofed possibilities

- eg something to consider, that helps mitigate your "bottleneck" concerns, is that, unlike the existing ADSL arrangements where two consumers in the same area/street each has their own siloed spoke to some remote internet exchange point;

With intelligent design, then local communities (and relevant public sector services eg eDemocracy, TeleHealth and BSF/Education) can communicate directly on a more localised basis

- Digital Subsidiarity :)

What really makes FtEH a once in a century opportunity for our entire society is not about the technology per se, it is about recognising that FtEH is an inevitable natural monopoly -

And structuring the ownership of the resultant national treasure in the community interest.

G